Powerfully struck by Ernst Jünger"s novel On the Marble Cliffs, Giorgio Battistelli resolved to transform the book into an opera--but the project was put aside out of concern for the political ramifications of the adaptation of a writer who had been so close to the Nazi ideology. At that point, drawing on sketches for the opera, Battistelli produced a symphonic work inspired by the "anarch," a key figure in Jünger"s literary work.